It comes as the US has recorded more than 25 million coronavirus cases, with experts advising on tighter safety measures to prevent figures spiralling completely out of control.Americans who are not in a priority group may not receive a vaccine until June, according to estimates from the Centres for Disease Control.New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday, local time, the city “urgently” needs more supply, and flexibility to vaccinate.Mega vaccination sites like CitiField and Yankee Stadium are “ready to go” he said adding “but we don’t have the vaccine.”Mr De Blasio noted that he and other mayors spoke with the Biden administration last week specifically about increasing vaccine capacity, noting the administration is “supremely focused” looking for every “conceivable way” to move vaccines.New York City is approaching 10 per cent COVID-19 positive infection rate. Meanwhile, Dr Deborah Birx and Dr Anthony Fauci are speaking out about their time in the Trump administration Coronavirus Task Force. Dr Fauci said:“We had a situation where instead of concentrating from the top on the science and realising that we must make decisions based on data and based on evidence, there was a considerable amount of mixed messaging about what needed to be done from the top down. And that really cost us dearly.” Dr Fauci made the comments during a panel at the Davos World Economic Forum on Monday.He said that “a profound degree of” divisiveness in the country over politicising mask-wearing had been “destructive” to the public.
Dr Birx said the former president Donald Trump was presented with and used data that she had never reviewed.Dr Birx denied that incoming President Joe Biden had been set up to fail, saying it was “important” to her that the new administration receive the necessary tools to tackle the crisis.“If I thought that was true, I wouldn’t be sleeping right now,” Dr Birx told CBS moderator Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation, when asked if she thought that his administration was “being set up for failure.”Mr Biden’s team has accused the Trump administration of having no vaccine plan for the virus.The former White House coronavirus response coordinator said she ensured the Biden administration and others have access to data tracking outbreaks.“We’re still slow in reaction and I think because in the early days we were so focused on flattening the curves and preserving the hospitals that people think if the hospitals are okay then we’re doing okay,” Dr Birx said. “But we need to react when you see that tiniest little uptick in test positivity.”
CALIFORNIA ENDS WIDE LOCKDOWN AS COVID HOSPITAL STRAIN EASESCalifornia lifted blanket “stay-at-home” orders across the US state Monday (local time), paving the way for activities including outdoor dining to return even in worst-hit regions as the pandemic’s strain on hospitals begins to ease.The western state has suffered one of the nation’s worst winter COVID spikes, with hospital intensive care units overwhelmed, ambulances backed up for hours at a time, and cases more than doubling since December to over three million.The “stay-at-home” measures were ordered for some 20 million people in southern and central California since December 3, but public health director Tomas Aragon said the state was now “turning a critical corner.”
“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” the state’s health secretary Mark Ghaly wrote in a statement.“Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and front-line medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared.” The decision to end the sweeping regional measures — which included blanket bans on gatherings and “non-essential” activities, and closed outdoor dining and personal care businesses such as hair salons — is based on forecasts for intensive care unit capacities improving across all California regions.
Latest ICU capacity in southern California is currently at zero per cent, but with daily new cases falling sharply, projections show more than 15 per cent will be available within four weeks.But previous restrictions based on individual county conditions will return, meaning bans will remain on dozens of activities including bars, indoor dining and live sport crowds in most counties.Individual counties can choose to impose stricter rules than the state requires, meaning severely affected regions including Los Angeles may even opt to retain current restrictions.Los Angeles officials did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. California has recorded more than 3.06 million COVID-19 cases, including almost 36,000 deaths.The state has delivered just under 1.8 million vaccine doses so far, having converted sites including Disneyland and the Dodger baseball stadium in Los Angeles into mass inoculation centres.BORIS MAY EASE LOCKDOWN RULES As the UK death toll from COVID-19 nears 100,000, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed some lockdown rules could be eased in just three weeks’ time.The PM said he is “looking at the potential of relaxing some measures” ahead of a review of restrictions on February 15.He also has said the idea of quarantining people arriving into the country in hotels for 10 days is being “looked at.”Mr Johnson made the remarks at a vaccination centre in North London on Monday, local time.But the PM also suggested that more must be done to protect the population from the new variants spreading from other countries, and said England has “got to be able to keep that under control.”Schools in England have been closed to most pupils since a third national lockdown began on January 5.
Pressure is building on the British government to reopen them, but Mr Johnson said parents and teachers will be told of any decisions “as soon as we can” but a date of return is as yet unknown.It comes as Britain has identified 77 cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, according to the country’s health secretary Matt Hancock.Mr Hancock said cases are linked to travellers arriving in the UK, rather than community transmission.Speaking to the BBC, he said cases were under “very close” observation and enhanced contact tracing was under way.Mr Hancock said that “three quarters of all the 80-year-olds [in Britain] and a similar number of care homes” had been vaccinated.Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines require two inoculations, and figures so far reflect those given the first dose.
Mr Hancock said cases in the UK are nowhere near low enough to see an end to the strict lockdown measures, reports The Sun.
“There is early evidence that the lockdown is starting to bring cases down.“But we’re a long, long, long way from being low enough because the case rate was incredibly high.“You can see the pressure on the NHS, you can see it every day.“The NHS are doing an amazing job in incredibly difficult circumstances and so we, I am confident in the measures that we’ve got in place now.“What really matters is that everybody follows them and the reason for that is not just the death toll each day which is far too high but also because the pressure on the NHS – including from people who thankfully come out of hospital alive – the pressure on the NHS is enormous and that has knock-on consequences for people who suffer from all other illnesses.“So it is very, very important that we continue to follow the rules, that’s at the core of it even while we do everything we can to support the NHS through this.”
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US PASSES 25M CASES AMID VACCINE SHORTAGEAmerica has now recorded more than 25 million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, Johns Hopkins University said, just days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration.The grim milestone was reached only five days after the US, the world’s wealthiest and hardest-hit nation, recorded 400,000 deaths from the disease.It comes as the country faces a vaccine shortage after a push to vaccinate America’s elderly was not accompanied by enough doses.
Recently, authorities in California, Ohio, West Virginia, Florida and Hawaii have warned that their supplies were running out. New York City began cancelling or postponing shots or stopped making new appointments because of the shortages, which Mr Biden has vowed to turn around. Florida’s top health official said the state would deal with the scarcity by restricting vaccines to state residents.The vaccine rollout so far has been “a major disappointment,” said Dr Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
Problems started with the Trump administration’s “fatal mistake” of not ordering enough vaccine, which was then snapped up by other countries, Dr Topol said. Then, opening the line to senior citizens set people up for disappointment because there wasn’t enough vaccine, he said. The Trump administration also left crucial planning to the states and didn’t provide the necessary funding.Mr Biden has made fighting the coronavirus a priority and is pushing for Congress to approve a US$1.9-trillion ($A2.4 trillion) relief package that would include billions of dollars to boost vaccination rates.Mr Biden has said he wants 100 million people vaccinated within his first 100 days in office, and he has called for Americans to wear masks for 100 days.Countries around the world are in a race against time to get their populations inoculated before the coronavirus mutates into a strain that could resist newly approved vaccinations.
Vivek Murthy, Mr Biden’s nominee for surgeon-general, told US TV on Sunday (local time) that 100 million doses in 100 days was “a floor, not a ceiling” and cautioned about new strains.“The variants are very concerning,” Mr Murthy said. “It’s up to us to adapt and stay ahead.”The US caseload remains by far the highest in absolute terms. India, where the population is about four times larger than in the US, has the second-highest caseload with about 10.6 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins.After the first COVID-19 case was reported in the US in January 2020 it took until late April for the figure to pass one million. The overall number of cases has followed an almost exponential curve upwards since then.Last week, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins announced more than 400,000 people in the US had died from COVID-19, a grim marker that came one day before Mr Biden’s inauguration.NEW ZEALAND RECORDS NEW COVID CASEMeanwhile, New Zealand has recorded its first community case of COVID-19 since November 18, breaking a two-month free streak. The 56-year-old arrived in New Zealand on December 30 after travelling from London and underwent two weeks of mandatory hotel isolation. The woman produced two negative tests while in isolation and was released on January 13; however began experiencing mild symptoms and returned a positive test on Saturday evening.
She is believed to have visited approximately 30 locations following her release from hotel quarantine before returning to isolation with her husband. While the government is currently treating the positive case as part of the highly contagious UK strain of the virus, New Zealand’s COVID-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins says it is too early for the community to panic. “It is too early to speculate on what our [government] response should be. We don’t have the relevant information to make those decisions yet,” Mr Hipkins said, adding, “There is absolutely no need for any panic buying or any of that kind of behaviour.”
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